The move to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is picking up steam in Congress. House leaders are committed to mark up a bill and bring it to the House floor by the end of September. The Senate intends to take similar action shortly thereafter. It is important that you contact your members of Congress at this crucial time. Your voice needs to be heard reiterating the AFT’s fundamental reauthorization priorities and specific recommendations.

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

I am writing to express my concerns about the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). My experience as an educator confirms that flaws in the law are undercutting its worthy goals.

The upcoming reauthorization gives us a chance to get it right for educators, our children and our schools. This can only happen when Congress makes necessary changes to the law. A reauthorized NCLB must:

Provide a fair and accurate accountability system that gives credit to schools that started further behind but are making real progress. Any additional indicators used to assess student learning and school performance should be helpful and not harmful. They should not lead to more ways to fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP). We need to continue to assess English language learners (ELLs) and students with disabilities so we have a clear picture of how they are performing. But these students should be more appropriately assessed as part of any new accountability systems.

Provide educators the support and resources they need to succeed in the classroom. It should not impose new and unnecessary requirements on teachers and paraprofessionals, and should not include a federal mandate to use test scores to evaluate teachers for incentive or performance pay. Teacher compensation plans should be negotiated on the local level. In order to attract and retain teachers, particularly in hard-to-staff schools, we need modernized school facilities, safe conditions, financial and professional supports, effective school leadership, and fair compensation.

Increase support for research-based interventions to truly struggling schools to help raise student achievement. The current system of punitive sanctions must change. Requiring that limited federal education dollars be spent on supplemental educational services that have no track record of success and are unaccountable cannot continue.

These funds should instead be spent on more research-based interventions at the school level to help truly struggling students.

Provide to districts and schools the funds they need to ensure that our children and school staff have the very best to do their very best. Achieving the goals of NCLB requires an investment in proven programs that help underserved students, such as reducing class size, offering research-based interventions to low-performing schools, and developing mentoring and induction programs.

Making these types of common sense revisions will improve NCLB and produce a bill that helps students, and that educators and parents can support.

Thank you for considering my views on these important issues. Please tell me where you stand on making these fundamental changes to NCLB.

Sincerely,

Campaign Launched:
August 31, 2007